Lynn Ruane (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for being here. It is quite hard to capture in words how proud I am to have been part of this committee. I owe that very much to my colleagues in the Civil Engagement group who stepped aside and did not contest our place on it and allowed me to have a voice in that room. I was not even born in 1983 so I definitely felt that I was the one in the group who had the least experience walking into the room. I thank them for their support. I also thank the Chair of the committee who was very just, fair and patient throughout the process. I thank her for the role she played at this historic time for women in Ireland.

The report speaks for itself. It is clear. The recommendations are clear, with good descriptions of the thought process taken by the committee members and the factors that led us to decide as we did. I hope that people take the time to read it. It is not as fully complete as it could be. There were issues that I pushed to be included that did not make it in but, for the most part, I am extraordinarily proud of the work we did and the report that was produced. I am thankful to the members who engaged in this process in an open and honest way, especially those who described the process as a journey. It was this journey that allowed real scientific and medical evidence to prevail while keeping the woman at the centre of the debate. Members challenged their long-held views and, in many cases, changed them. One of the most powerful things a public representative or anyone can do is to admit growth, to admit that maybe their previously expressed views were based on a lack of or incomplete information, and I would like to applaud them for that.

As we move forward from this report and towards a referendum, that educational process is one that needs to be replicated in communities across the country. I hope that politicians can go forward and become ambassadors for starting those conversations and informing people about the realities of the eighth amendment and what the criminalisation and illegality of abortion has meant for women in Ireland.

I may have been a strong supporter of repeal on the committee but it was not long ago that I went on a similar journey. It was only five short years ago and I remember having conversations with friends and other students in college where I expressed a lot of misinformed and incorrect views on abortion and the eighth amendment. I was challenged on those view and, as a result, I took the time to educate and empower myself and that has made all the difference. No matter what one's view on abortion is, one should be fully armed with the facts, with the statistics, with the expert testimony and testimony from women affected and be fully aware of the impact of the eighth amendment on reproductive rights, on female autonomy, on health care and on maternity because it may radically change how one feels. It also may not change, and that will be the case for some people, but it is the responsibility of every politician and every person who will vote in this referendum to undergo the same process of information-led reflection and decision making that has defined every step of the process that has resulted in us debating this report in the Oireachtas today.

Now that we have been through the committee process and hours of expert testimony from women, doctors, lawyers, health-care providers and international experts, the extensive debate on every aspect of the impact of the eighth amendment on every part of women's health care and their lives, I now believe that the eighth amendment is one of the primary barriers to the reproductive freedom and the enjoyment of true equality by women in Ireland. It is a blunt instrument in our Constitution that takes away the ability of women in this country to make fundamental decisions around their reproduction, maternity and their own lives. It is the lives of women that we are talking about. When one takes away the ability of a woman to decide if and when she wishes to have a child, one takes away her control over her own life.

It has gone far beyond its original intended purpose, namely, an ostensible constitutional ban on abortion and has affected every aspect of women's health care and their medical autonomy. While the eighth amendment affects every woman of childbearing age in this country, it disproportionately targets poorer women, migrant women and refugee women without the means or methods to travel, and places them in impossible situations, forced to choose between motherhood against their will or unsafe and illegal abortion procedures.

It is archaic and a relic of an Ireland that no longer exists, where women were mistreated, belittled and locked up if they violated a narrow set of dogmatic religious teachings of how women should behave and live their lives. It does not belong in the constitution of a modern, secular republic. It is morally wrong and it will probably be one of my proudest moments as a Member of the Oireachtas that I was able to vote in favour of recommending its repeal.I am proud of the contents of this report. It does a comprehensive job of covering many of the policy details that arise when legislating for abortion access. I draw particular attention to the ancillary recommendations which are, arguably, the most important part of the report as they relate to access to contraception, health care and sexual education, which every international expert said were the best methods of reducing abortion rates. However, I recognise that much of the political, media and public attention has focused on the recommendation of access to abortion in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. The committee's decision to recommend a 12-week limit was not plucked from the sky, it was the recommendation of the Citizens' Assembly and it is also widely accepted as an international and Europe-wide standard. We decided that it was an appropriate response to the issues that arise in terminations in cases of rape and incest in terms of verifying sexual assault with survivors and unnecessarily re-traumatising them. It also matches the gestational limits in terms of the use of the abortion pill, as it is advised to use it in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

I was therefore struck by the comments made by An Taoiseach, but also echoed through many media outlets and politicians, at his post-Cabinet press conference last Wednesday that our recommendations may be a step too far. I do not think these recommendations are a step too far. Rather than trying to dismiss the results of two representative, accountable and democratic processes informed by expert evidence, we would be better off considering the extent to we have become desensitised to the impact of the eighth amendment and the horrific stories that come to light as a result. Each day in which we leave it in our Constitution is a step too far. I listened to many of the stories in the past few months presented in an art installation entitled "Not at Home" by a group called THEATREclub. I think of the woman who travelled to Leeds for an abortion denied her at home and who accidentally drank a cup of tea on the flight over. She could not be put under an anaesthetic as a result and because she could not afford to fly over on another date, had to undergo a surgical abortion with no anaesthetic that day. Her experience was a step too far. The bags of some women were searched in the airport, and their bloody clothes and underwear were on display for airport staff. That is a step too far. The loss of dignity for those grieving mothers who had to travel after major surgery being exposed in a public place like that is a step too far. Women having to sit in cinemas in Liverpool after abortion procedures, where they would be warm and somewhat comfortable, being in public view if they started haemorrhaging is a step too far. It is a step too far for families who terminated in cases of a fatal foetal abnormality and had the bodies of their babies sent to them as if they were an Amazon delivery. It is a step too far that women who were raped and forced to continue the pregnancy because they could not afford to travel and because Irish law did not deem them worthy of access to a termination. It is a step too far that women who were forced to give birth against their will because they were either too poor to pay for flights or because they were a migrant and had no passport. It is a step too far when public representatives put out blatantly false and scaremongering information that abortion access on request up to 12 weeks will increase terminations in cases of Down's syndrome. Having to even set foot in an airport and travel abroad to access health care, the whole 134-mile trip to Liverpool, is a step too far. Let us not make the mistake of standing still; instead let us take a step forward, not a step too far.

I will not accept that these recommendations are too radical when the alternative is the status quo, which sees stories like these come about every single day and where women are forced to take their lives in their own hands to travel to another jurisdiction because some politicians in this country are too pious and sanctimonious to accept that whether they like it or not, women need and will always need access to abortion. Politicians who say they cannot accept this report may feel they are taking a brave stand based on a moral and principled opposition to abortion but their position will not stop abortion. It will simply say to women in this country that those politicians' personal beliefs interfere too much to give them access to what they need and good luck on the flight to the UK because they will need it. Those politicians may be able to claim that their conscience is clear, that they did not vote to make abortion legal in Ireland but they did, they just required that it happen illegally and unsafely.

This report is not a step too far. It is a step in the right direction, towards giving women in Ireland control over their reproductive health, their bodies and their lives and will hopefully go some way to make amends for the historical treatment of women by this State. We may have been able to convince ourselves that the eighth amendment stopped abortion in Ireland but this report shows it did not. Women simply travelled abroad to access what was not legal here or they performed illegal abortions at home, on their own and without medical supervision.

Let us not make the mistake of collectively putting our heads in the sand again, as has been the case with this issue for the past 35 years. Let us do right by Irish women and accept the decision of the Citizens' Assembly and the Oireachtas committee, repeal the eighth amendment and give women choice and control over their lives.